From 1998 to 2002, Sarah Wolter was a Gustie student who had no need for a laptop. “Your professor never emailed you, anyway. We barely had Hotmail,” she says. Assignments were mostly based in writing, and research papers. “If you were learning something in a new discipline, you went to the library and researched the topic.”
Three years and a master’s degree later, in 2005, Wolter ’02 returned to Gustavus to teach in the Communication Studies department. By now, most students had laptops, and Googling was an important first step in conducting research. But few students had smart phones, Instagram was three years away, and TikTok more than a decade down the road.
It was then—post-laptop, pre-AI—Wolter and faculty in the Communication Studies department created a course to push students into their real worlds. Project- and community-based, it would be highly customized and grown straight from each individual student’s interests in making meaningful change. They called it Public Discourse and considered it a replacement to the Public Speaking course, which was “the bread and butter of communication studies departments,” says professor Martin Lang ’95.
At its worst, public speaking as a course can be filled with wedding toasts and easy speeches about tired topics. A snooze to take—and teach. Plus, the department wanted to train students in rhetorical argument, context, and audience. Says Lang, “Our department thought, ‘We have so much more to offer than this.’”
“The only way you make progress in your community is through people. AI is never going to live in community.”
—Professor Martin Lang ’95
Public Discourse was a success then, prescient now. Students can use AI in the course, but in no way can they rely on it. The semester- long project must be focused on a hyper local issue. Students must investigate the background of the issue, which means interviewing real people who have a stake in the topic. They then give a persuasive speech about it and present their recommendations for change to people in the community who could benefit. You just can’t outsource that to ChatGPT.
Since its inception, students have worked on 3,000 civic projects through Public Discourse, from elder loneliness in Iowa City, IA, to youth sports pressure in Edina to zebra mussels in a public golf course irrigation system in Watertown, SD. “We exist in a democracy where we have free will and participate as individuals,” Wolter says. “AI can’t think about how to exist together.” Gusties can.
In fact, the whole campus and beyond can. Students don’t have to be communication studies majors to benefit from the lessons of Public Discourse. An iteration of the belief that engaging in community around issues makes you a smarter, more engaged citizen is Public Deliberation and Dialogue, a co-curricular program hosted by the Communication Studies department that trains majors and non-majors to moderate conversations about issues. For instance, what should we do about immigration, national debt, climate change, the college’s relationship to the Dakota People? (All topics that have been hosted.)
Anyone can participate. “We’re teaching students skills that they are going to be applying to democracy and their regular lives,” says professor Hagar Attia, director of the Public Deliberation and Dialogue program. “It’s not just to get a job. It’s how to participate in a democracy, critically consume media, have a discussion with family members.” Essentially, how to be a person in the world.
On the last day of the class, professor Breena Brockmann asks students what they’re proudest of. “Often it’s that they actually did it—they were able to get people to talk to them. It’s the real world work they’ve done, and that it has real world importance. I know and the students know this is not just for a grade. And that ups the stakes for everyone.”
REAL, LOCAL CHALLENGES ADDRESSED.
What issues have students addressed in Public Discourse? Here’s a short list of projects they’ve worked on with mayors, boards, and business and civic leaders:
• Relocating wild turkeys terrorizing mail carriers and destroying landscaping in Hutchinson.
• A food pantry partnership in a senior center to provide better nutrition for the elderly in Prior Lake.
• A bathroom pass system for homeless encampments to combat E. Coli in the American River in Sacramento, CA.
• Low-cost classes for children to learn water puppetry, a declining heritage Vietnamese art form, in Hanoi.
• A pictorial guide to assist refugees not adequately supported by translation services in Stevens Point, WI.
• Expanding a neuter program to include vaccinations of feral cats to stop the spread of disease in Vermillion, SD.
• Multilingual communication plus community meetings with school leaders to address barriers to Latino parent involvement in Columbia Heights.
• Connecting church congregations with a housing advocacy group to increase visibility of the problem of homelessness in Washington County.
